There a number of reasons to take advantage of free online dating sites. Dating sites are set up for the purpose of finding dating opportunities in your own area. Because not everyone has access to good places to meet potential dating partners, an online dating site offers the ideal solution to finding a prospective date for just a casual evening out, or for long term relationships. Even in the urban area, it’s not always possible to find a place to meet a dating selection without exposing yourself to unwanted advances. By using a free dating site in your area, you can check out those singles who are looking for someone to have fun with. Here are some reasons why using a dating site is a great idea:

Economics

When you are trying out the concept of free online dating, why spend a lot of money on various subscription sites when you can get the same information about people looking for dating in your area at no cost. Online sites that cost nothing are not that hard to find, and if you look for one that has a large client base, you can usually find people in your area who are also interested in dating.

Variety

Because there are no costs to the end user for free online dating sites, you may find a wider selection of people looking for dating services on a free site rather than a paid site. When someone is just looking for the opportunity to build dating options, they probably don’t want to spend a lot of money at more than one site. This type of single person would be more likely to list with several free sites in hopes of expanding the opportunities for selection without paying for several sites. If it’s free, many people will not be so concerned about losing money and will go ahead and sign up with several sites.

Geography

You may think that because you live in a small town that you know everyone of dating age in the area. If you sign up at one or more of the free online dating sites, you might be surprised to find that there are people in your area that you didn’t even think of as potential dating material. Maybe your paths just never crossed before, or maybe you didn’t appreciate all their great qualities. If you get to know them on an online site for dating, you might just find that your viewpoint on the old hometown has changed.

Activities

Sometimes people using a free online dating site will wonder what they can do about going out with a person that they meet online. To begin with, it’s often enough to do some visiting online and just chat with others so that you get an opportunity to know them better. You won’t usually feel stressed about having to go out with a stranger and not know anything about their likes and dislikes. You’ve already learned what he or she likes to do for recreation and hopefully you like much the same things, so finding a dating activity should be quite simple.

Back in the day, it used to just be loser guys that signed up for all this online dating stuff. Guys that either didn’t have the social skills to walk up to a girl in a bar, guys that were too ugly and dorky to attract girls in a bar, or guys that were just so shy they couldn’t even go out to bars for the fear of social contact. But these days, there are some cool, good looking, and well to do guys that are opting to date online rather than noisy bars.

So why are guys that are more than capable of finding girls in bars etc. choosing to look online for mates and / or partners? Well, the online dating world is not what it used to be some 3 to 5 years ago. Gone are the days when it was fraught with socially inept people, or sleazy guys just looking for one night hook ups. What with tighter legislation on these online dating sites making them safer, and free alternatives to the more usual expensive monthly fee type of sites, free online dating has really taken off and is part of the normal practice of dating.

The popularity of sites like Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube, means that both guys and girls are more used to sharing information online than they ever used to. And now that these sites are properly secured, meaning no one can get your personal details unless you want them to, online dating is fast becoming the best way to date in our modern world.

You must be wary though of sites claiming to offer free online dating when in actual fact, they let you create an account for free, but then when you see a girl you would like to chat with, they ask for you credit card.

Similarly, there are a ton of online dating sites that just offer free online dating for women and not guys. These kinds of sites do well as studies have shown that guys are more likely to pay to get in contact with a mate, than girls.

So if cash is a little tight for you right now, then you probably want to know about sites that offer totally free online dating for men and not just women. Well the good news is that there are some websites out there that do offer free online dating for all. Three of the best are:

Plenty of Fish
Connecting Singles
Dating Hall

Unlike most of the sites that you have come across, these online dating sites do actually offer totally free online dating for men and women alike. You are able to create an account with them and browse through as many girls as you want. If the girls you click on, click on you back then you are in business and you can chat away for free for as long as you want.

There is a saying “You get what you pay for” and while high price doesn’t mean high quality anymore, free still means questionable quality. Free online dating is just that, free, and there are a lot of risks involved. There are decent honest people using free online dating services all over the world. At the same time there are scam artists, perverts, and people who lie on every question in their profile using free online dating services. You can get this same mixture of people in the night club that you cruise looking for dates. Your chances of finding the decent people in the world of free online dating are about the same as finding the decent people hanging out in the hot clubs.

First free online dating sites do not screen people. Some ask a lot of detailed questions and then review each profile in hopes of weeding out the bad eggs before they can access their site. Others are simply a worldwide classifieds section. Some may offer a little less risk but neither offer screening. The guy down the street that creeps you out may say he is from Europe and his profile picture may be of a guy on a gondola. The lady at your office that you can’t stand may be Miss Perfect profile right down to the long blond hair that doesn’t look anything like her in reality. The point is no one from the free online dating site has actually met this person so there is a chance that they are nothing like their profile or picture.

Second online dating sites do not perform background checks. The person may be fairly honest in answering all their questions – from jail. Some people could be using free online dating sites to scam others out of their money and even if they have been previously convicted, they can still be on your online dating site. Some people could be on their trying to collect pictures of others people’s children or looking for people with children for perverted reasons. No one is going to know, no one is going to highlight these facts for you because no one at the dating site knows. Background checks are not preformed so you are walking into the situation blind. Granted no one at your local club is performing background checks either so your chances of meeting an unsavory person are about the same between your club and the free online dating site.

The third risk in free online dating sites is that no one is checking ID’s. At your local club people are at least checking ID’s and only good fakes allow the young ones in. But what about you’re online dating site? With no one checking ID’s who knows what age that person is. An 80 year old could be reliving their thirties online or a 13 year old could be looking to just mess with members of the site. You have no idea what you are getting into; at least at a club you can see the person and decide their age for yourself.

The potential for identify theft is a fourth risk in free online dating. Most sites that gather your personal information are secure but that won’t stop a determined hacker. In addition you run the risk of telling a stranger a lot of information about yourself. While you believe that you are getting closer to this person, they have already started stealing your identity. People that meet online tend to talk about more personal things sooner than they would if they were sitting at the club talking. If free online dating sites had background checks, they could screen out the people who have already been busted for identity theft. This would at least reduce the risk of identity theft a bit.

The fifth risk of free online dating is that no actual person from the dating site has met the members on the site. They don’t know who would be a good match for you. They just allow you to browse thousands of profiles for people who may or may not match your personality. Honestly, personality is probably one of the last things you find out about someone you meet in the club but online dating hinges on the ability to personality match with others. At least when your friends set you up on a blind date, it is with someone they have met and believe will be good for you. No one who knows you knows all the other people on a free online dating site. No actually person can recommend someone that they believe would match your personality. When you sign up for a free online dating site, you are flying blind but maybe that brings its own level of excitement for you.

Free online dating sites are a great idea but they are only a little better then going out to the club and hoping to find someone. The vast number of people, real or fake, on free dating sites reaches the thousands. You get to wade blindly through all these profiles hoping to stumble on the one who is a perfect match for you. But even with all these risks and insurmountable odds, people have found their mates in free online dating sites or through a person that they met on a free online dating site.

So where does that leave you? There are other options, for example matchmakers. A matchmaker meets you and every other person that they think may be good for you. They narrow the field down to people that you may actually be interested in based on real information. It’s not to say that a good scam artist isn’t going to make it onto a matchmakers list, they wouldn’t be good if they couldn’t. It is just a way to decrease some of the risks that are associated with free online dating and save you time in the mate hunting process.

In the end dating is a game of testing others in hopes to find the one person that fits with you. Unfortunately some people get hurt feelings and other people get taken advantage of during this process. However you find your date, in a free online dating site or from a matchmaker, remember to stay safe and enjoy yourself.